The Fish, The Birds, and The Beach

Collier leaders and future leaders showed up at Tigertail Beach on Saturday to get a little grounding on the water.

A group from the Leadership Collier Foundation of the Greater Naples Chamber literally got their feet wet on coastal ecology in the Tigertail lagoon, learning about the sea creatures, bird life, and the many other denizens of Marco Island’s premier estuarine habitat. This is an experience that local youths can also participate in, with a program occurring on July 11.

The Leadership Collier alumni got to hear from naturalists and education specialists from the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, including education director Sarah Falkowski, and education specialists Kennedy Hanson and Aliyah Albadri.

The estuary and the lagoon are vitally important to many species, Falkowski told the group.

“The estuary is a nursery. This is where baby animals grow,” she said. Some will make their way to the open ocean, while some remain in the backwaters for their entire lives. And the lagoon, and critters that grow there, are in turn critical for the health of the Southwest Florida ecosystem.

But rather than just hear about it, the participants got their feet wet (and muddy) and their hands full of juvenile fish. They waded into the Tigertail lagoon with a seine net and retrieved scores of fish of varying sizes, laying the net out flat (briefly) on the beach to identify the catch, before escorting them back into their habitat.

Fish caught up in the seine net – does that make them “in-seine?” – included a number of species, some of them difficult for the layman to differentiate. One small, silvery fish flopping around at the edge of the lagoon looks much like another, and sometimes even the experts have to work to make a definite identification. There were mojarra, black drum, whiting, saltwater killifish, a hard-headed catfish, a tiny juvenile flounder who was identified as a “hog choker,” and anchovies, which looked different for someone used to seeing them primarily on a Caesar salad.

Additional catch featured snails or univalve seashells, including crown conch and a lightning whelk, which as Hanson demonstrated, is unique among local univalves for being a “left-handed” shell, with its whorls growing in the opposite direction from all the other conchs. There were transparent comb jellies, which mercifully do not have the stinging component of many jellyfish.

Hanson also plucked up a fiddler crab from the beach and told the group about its habits, and the one oversized claw that gives the species its name.

“This was a chance to get up close and personal with anchovies, snails, and other wildlife in the lagoon,” said Marisa Carrozzo. She spans both worlds, Rookery Bay and the Leadership Collier program. A board member of the Friends of Rookery Bay, the reserve’s citizen support organization, she is also a graduate of the chamber’s Leadership Collier program and a member of the Explore Collier committee that the Leadership Collier Foundation tasks with providing continuing education for Leadership alumni, focusing on our natural environment.

“We want to provide a deeper insight and appreciation for this unique resource that’s right in our backyard and help our members understand the importance of keeping our natural systems healthy,” she said. That’s also her full-time occupation; in her day job, Carrozzo is a senior program manager for NPCA, the National Parks Conservation Association.

On Saturday morning, with the tide coming in, “deeper insight” translated to just below waist-deep when wading across the lagoon to continue exploring on the Gulf of Mexico side of the Tigertail spit. The group observed pelicans diving on fish in the lagoon, a great egret competently spearing his breakfast, and then throwing the fish back into his gullet without bothering to confirm its species. A reddish egret, known as the “drunken sailor bird” for the way it poses while waiting for fish, according to Falkowski, plied his trade on a sandbar nearby.

Along the Gulf beach, when the group encountered several fenced-off sea turtle nests, Falkowski discussed the conservation efforts that Rookery Bay, as well as Marco Island and Collier County governments, pursue to help improve the survival rate of turtle hatchlings. It’s estimated that only one in a thousand sea turtles - the ones that do successfully hatch - survive to maturity. They fall prey to a host of predators, including raccoons, crabs, ants, and seabirds.

After leaving the beach, the group took in additional learning opportunities at the Rookery Bay Environmental Learning Center on Collier Blvd.

Rookery Bay is hosting similar programs for young students through their Student Institute for Marine Science, or SIMS. This initiative offers a half-day marine science camp for seventh to tenth graders who want to get hands-on with marine life and learn from real scientists. The next day the SIMS Tigertail “Sleuthing the Lagoon” experience will be offered is July 11. There are additional programs through the beginning of August, including “Behind the Scenes at the Reserve,” “Invertebrate Investigations,” and “Biology on Bike.”